Sticker Art

I originally had another more complicated craft planned for this week, but on Sunday I put together a little project for my son so that I could buy 15 minutes to make dinner. He was so pleased with the results that we thought we'd share it with you today. My son loves these dimensional stickers, but I am always reluctant to buy him for them, because they are rather expensive. One sheet of them is about $3.99 if you don't have a Michael's coupon, which is a lot to spend for your young child to stick them to a piece of paper that you will likely throw away a few days later. I purchased a set of canvas covered boards for another project, so I decided to let him use one of those, which would make his "artwork" seem a little more special.

3_stickerart_mix



Step one
Have your child draw a "setting" for the dimensional stickers on the canvas board using the pastels.
Step two
Have your child place the stickers on the board where he would like them to be glued (the adhesive on the stickers doesn't work on the waxy pastels).
Step three
Heat up your glue gun and fasten all of the stickers to the canvas board. (tip: regular school glue such as Elmer's would work as well, but would take longer to dry)
Step four
Place your child's artwork on a shelf or pop it in a shadowbox frame, and enjoy. Alternatively, you could use my son's idea, and "send it to the museum."
Variations:
One nice thing about this project is that you can adjust the degree of difficulty depending on the age of the child. The very young child could simply scribble on the board and stick the stickers in random places. This is likely what my 2 1/2 year old daughter would do. My nearly 6 year old son drew a more detailed drawing and placed the stickers in appropriate places. An older child could draw a very detailed background, or work with other mediums such as paint or decoupaged fabric, adding the stickers when the background is dry. Because the canvas board is rigid, it would work well on a shelf as a part of a seasonal display.